


close quarters, dark corners

by fensandmarshes



Series: Time Capsule Challenge [1]
Category: Spirit Animals - Various Authors
Genre: (a little), Angst, Character Study, Gen, Other, Pining, Post-Book 5: Against the Tide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23812078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fensandmarshes/pseuds/fensandmarshes
Summary: Abeke misses the certainty that came with Conor's tidal steadiness. She misses Rollan in the same way that she misses the open air. She misses the younger, intact Meilin, so very quick-witted and quick-tempered, hidden somewhere within the shattered pieces of the broken solder Meilin has become. She misses the sunlight. She misses herhome.or: Abeke's bracelet has four strands, one each for sun, fire, water and wind. It is the unity of these things that makes it a good luck charm. Also, found family.
Relationships: Abeke & Conor & Meilin & Rollan, hints of OT4
Series: Time Capsule Challenge [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1715989
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	close quarters, dark corners

**Author's Note:**

> i was rereading one of these books and it turns out i'm still emo for this fandom? anyway this is inspired by a mention in chapter 1 of hunted that each of the strands in abeke's bracelet stands for a certain thing (one each for sun, fire, water and wind) and that the unity of them is what makes it a good luck charm, and, well -
> 
> (that said, this actually takes place between against the tide and rise and fall, when they're both locked up in the bottom of the conquerors' ship.)

_Sun, fire, water, wind,_ Abeke muses, fingers worrying Soama’s elephant-hair bracelet, tied neatly around her wrist. She misses the sun, misses Nilo. Abeke is not made for closed quarters or dark corners. She’s withering in these dank shadows. Uraza rumbles at her side, warm even in the chilly brig, and Abeke threads her hand absently through Uraza’s fur.

She misses the wind in her face, the waves at her back. She misses Rollan and Conor. The honest, raw anguish on Conor’s face from back in Oceanus is still fresh in her mind - seared there, really. It’s inescapable. Conor, ever-steady, gentle and sure like the push and pull of water, the cycle of the seasons - he seemed torn open and wholly broken, sharp with harsh edges in a way that Abeke didn’t know he was able to be. She can’t let the memory break her now. (Not like it broke him.) But she wants to lean her shoulders against Conor’s chest, feel his side against hers when she leans towards him, a constant presence in her periphery - she misses the _certainty_ that came with being near him. 

Abeke remembers finding a twin to her soul in Conor’s own - both of them simpler and more earnest, back then, and ardently loving of the open sky. They’d stumbled together when they were younger. It wasn’t like there was anyone else willing to take all their wildness - that of the wolf and the leopard - and all their soft, loved edges, of children cherished, adored. Conor loved the Euran rains, and Abeke has always ached for the sun, but they found solace in loyal solidarity.

Abeke, hunter that she is, rain-dancer that she was supposed to be, knows that the droughts always end. That the waterholes always fill again, if given time and sufficient love. There was no ocean in Okaihee, but her world is bigger than a village, now, and the Greencloak in her - world-wise, or maybe weary - knows that the tides always turn, that the storms always pass. That Conor always comes back to her, gentle until the moment he’s _not_ and so breathtakingly loyal that it swells in her chest, even now. She’d like to believe that he and Rollan will find herself and Meilin. Eventually.

Her bracelet is tight. Too tight, now - as if it’s shrunk while she’s been toying with it. Its itch against her skin is all at once too much. She can feel each individual hair like a brand.

Sun. Fire. Water. Wind.

Abeke misses Rollan, too, though it’s not the same omnipresent absence that she feels for Conor like a hole in her chest - Rollan, though braver than anyone she knows except maybe Meilin, is not as constantly present. He needs more space. She misses him when there’s a break in the conversation that she _knows_ he would have used to make a joke. She misses his light, his cleverness. The escapes he drew, with a sharp tongue and sharper eyes, from impossible situations. Rollan _finds ways_. He sidesteps rules. Abeke could use some of that cunning now.

Rollan, she knows, is the type to cut his losses. He wouldn’t leave Conor now, she hoppes - but who knows? Tarik is gone, and Rollan has always been surprising at best and inscrutable at worst. He changes in an instant, like the fickle winds that buffet the Greenhaven parapets. Maybe he’s already left. Maybe he used the Slate Elephant and disappeared into a different sky, Essix navigating the air with breathless ease; maybe he didn’t bother saying goodbye.

She misses Rollan in the same way that she misses the open air. There’s air in the brig, of course - there’s Abeke and Meilin’s half-baked escape plans, their feeble attempts at humour - but this air is musty and heavy, and Abeke’s jokes stick like gruel to her tongue. Rollan would know what to say, what to do. If he were here.

There’s no breeze in their prison, though, and Rollan is somewhere across an ocean.

Abeke chances a look sideways at Meilin, who’s huddled, tension apparent in the line of her body even in her sleep, into Jhi’s side. Meilin looks frail, empty. Jhi gives Abeke a half-hearted glare - _touch her, and I kill you_ \- but there’s no spirit in it, and they both know it. There’s none of the fire that is meant to pulse in Meilin’s sharp words, like a living thing. None of the fierce energy that Meilin usually breathes into everything she does. Meilin and Jhi are a pair of broken soldiers, a set of twin flames spent.

Abeke aches for Meilin’s pain, so much that it’s like a physical thing. She misses the younger, intact girl that Abeke first met in Amaya, so very quick-witted and quick-tempered, like a flash of lightning above the savannah. She wishes she could help find that girl amongst the shattered pieces of the soldier Meilin has become. 

But Abeke is so very, very tired.

She remembers their first few days in the brig together - Meilin’s guilt had turned inwards, and it ate her up from the inside, like fire desperate for something to burn. Meilin was alight, back then, if with a twisted, harsh spark to her eyes.Abeke remembers the pacing. The way Meilin dug her nails into her own skin, throat raw from the screaming and words thick with shame. Abeke remembers Meilin’s vomiting, her tirades of vitriol - seething with hatred for the Conquerors, for Jhi, for Abeke even. Abeke remembers the way Meilin destroyed her own hope and resolve from the inside out, with only her crumbling willpower and weaponised guilt.

But Meilin is quiet, now. Meilin is silent and cold and damp, huddled against her spirit animal’s chest in a desperate bid to find something warm and whole. She reminds Abeke of the embers she used to kick sand and dust over when she was done with them, back in Nilo - quenched. Suffocated. Nothing left to burn.

Abeke misses Conor’s tidal certainty, Rollan’s whirlwind irreverence. She misses Meilin’s blazing defiance, sharp and fierce and whole. She misses the open, sunny savannah. She misses her freedom. She misses being Abeke of Okaihee. 

Abeke of Okaihee was clement, cloudless. She had brilliant smiles and mercy left to give. She was tireless, too, able to run for hours and have more in her still; Abeke misses her days of energy and grace. Those days are over now.

She misses the sunlight. She misses her family, both found and given. She misses her _home_.

Abeke sighs, long and hard, and tucks herself into Uraza’s side; Uraza gazes back at her, unflinching, with an intensity to her violet eyes that Abeke has never seen before. Abeke clenches her fists, and misses the sun and the fire and the wind and the water, and rips her bracelet from her wrist with a cry. 

There is no room to breathe in their prison. 

Meilin is broken. 

Abeke is cold and almost alone, withering without the sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> i cannot fucking believe i wrote a spirit animals fanfiction in the year of our lord 2020, but i'm in social isolation and i am so . so bored,,, anyway please lmk if you enjoyed this <3


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